Spurs' glory days are now, not then

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, June 16, 1999

THE San Antonio Spurs stride boldly into the NBA Finals carrying only the honor of Texas' third city and their own desire to win a commemorative hubcap with a hole for their third fingers.

That seems plenty, and it is. What they do not do, though, as much as basketball historians and nostalgia freaks would wish them to, is carry the water for the late and much lamented American Basketball Association.

To put this another way, David Robinson was 10 years old when the ABA folded, and was still saluting strangers when Julius Erving retired.

To put it yet another way, the Spurs as they now play have remarkably little to do with the style the ABA introduced, perfected and bequeathed to the NBA when it expired.

This is not a criticism of the Spurs themselves. They are what they are, and that's all that they are, the NBA Finalist most people would like to be a part of right now. But a distant connection to the red, white and blue ball is no more applicable to this San Antonio team than Sacramento's connection to the 1951 champion Rochester Royals.

The ABA as captured on film and in the definitive book,

"Loose Balls," was a wild, rollicking, occasionally drunken ride, with a hell-comes-tomorrow style of play that nearly every team employed, from Oakland to Miami, New Jersey to San Diego. The ABA was a ball, a style, a way of life. It should be celebrated for its lack of inhibition.

THESE SPURS, though, don't play that way. They surely don't live that way. Robinson is all biceps, triceps and starched shoestrings. Tim Duncan is all work ethic and stoicism (and one tattoo on his right trapezius, despite all the reports that he is ink-free). Avery Johnson is the squeaky juke box that never put the wrong tongue forward. Gregg Popovich is squarer than Dan Quayle's last geometry test, all the way down to his angular haircut.

And most of all, they do not run up and down the floor with shorts-afire abandon. They are the very model of the late '90s NBA team. They averaged 92.8 points per game, smack dab in the middle of the league in the worst scoring year since Dwight Eisenhower took off his warm-ups. They also allowed 84.7 points, the second-lowest in the league and as such one of the lowest in that same 45-year span.

Twenty years ago, with the prototypical Spurs team of George Gervin, Larry Kenon, James Silas, Mike Gale and Billy "The Whopper" Paultz, they reached the Eastern Conference final by scoring 119 points per game, with seven games of more than 140 (the entire NBA produced four teams that scored more than 121 this year, and those were in a double overtime game and a triple overtime game. The team's shooting percentage was .506 (as opposed to .456), and they were held under 100 only twice in 82 games, as opposed to the current group's 40 in 50 games.

And that Spurs team wasn't even in the ABA at the time.

Now you might think then that the New York Knicks, without Patrick Ewing and Larry Johnson but with the heat of optimism's flame at their backs, could provide that ABA spark you're aching for. And of course, you would be wrong; with Ewing, the Knicks averaged 85 points, and without him, 90.

Ninety. The Spurs had a 91-point half once against Denver. A bridge to the ABA? It is to laugh.

OF COURSE, this snide approach ruins a cute angle and a way to haul out all that old Gervin footage from the days when the shot clock never rang and the three-point arc was about eight feet too close. And in honesty, there is never a bad reason to show the old ABA films. It reminds you of why the game could stand a good swift kick, and soon.

Still, it must be made clear before you settle into your snuggly blue chair and send the kids to bed at 6:15 ( "Because I told you to, that's why" ) that San Antonio used to be an ABA city with all the wacky charm that implies, and the Spurs used to be an ABA team. Neither of those statements is true any longer, and while it is unduly nostalgic to say something pithy like "More's the pity," this warning will come in handy when Bob Costas, himself an old ABA guy, starts waxing rhapsodic about San Antonio's relationship with the Spurs and the good old days.

Listen to him, then watch the game. Pretty soon he'll start sounding like an old Washingtonian getting all rheumy-eyed for the Senators. The kings are dead, we are saddened but required to report, and long live the kings.&lt;

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